Five Letter Word
by IvoryAlchemist
Summary: There was a time that you loved her more than all the stars in the sky, which you think is a stupid expression because you don't love the stars at all, and you shouldn't love her either.


Sometimes, late at night, maybe after you had too much to drink and stayed up too late and took too many pills, you can swear you still smell her shampoo in your pillow.

You remember when you bought that pillow. When you met her, you only had one because the number of people sleeping in your bed was one. But then it got hard trying to share a single pillow so you went and purchased one for her, a surprise and your own, strange way of welcoming her into your life. And now that the number of people in your bed is back down to one, you still keep her pillow for those long, lonely nights when you need to pretend she'll come back someday.

Wilson comes to you one morning and says that she and her husband have left, that you are too late to say good-bye. A part of you is crushed, another part relieved.

But it is only the next day when you wake up with a feeling like someone's scooped all your insides out, that you've been gutted like the fish your father used to want you to catch, and you know that nothing will _ever _fill that void, that you feel a pain in your leg and your soul like you have only felt only once before, back when this all began, and you are sure you are going to die. You _need _to die, to let this all be over and done with.

And when Wilson tells you all the pain is in your in head you want to say no, it is my heart and my soul and in all the happiness I don't feel, not even one little bit in my head. But you don't, you say that it is all your leg and none of his business, pushing past him because you aren't sure what he is trying to prove.

For a long time, your work was your sanctuary, where the world had no choice but to let you be yourself. But she managed in her remarkable powers of destruction to take even that small comfort, because you feel her haunting every corner of your office—the space on your desk where her picture ought to be, the scent of her perfume in the carpets and the walls, the look of ravenous jealousy in Cameron's eyes. But it comes in unexpected ways too, when your guard is down, and hits you like a ton of bricks of all that you'll never have.

It's a frosty morning when Chase is chewing on his pencil and looks up and asks you in his obnoxious, Australian voice:

"What's a five letter word for _agony_?" And you think that you know nothing as certainly as you know this; and you almost speak her name, you feel its heat pressing on your lips.

But just when you open your mouth to say it a twisting pain in your leg draws your attention away, and you grab your thigh and know that you live everyday in this horrible agony and having another word for it never did you any good.

So instead you say something witty and mean because it's easy and it's quick and it's _who you are_, even though sometimes you aren't sure just what that is.

You know what it is like to think you can change for her, that love is enough, and just when you reassure her and ready yourself you realize you don't even know who you are, and there is nothing you can change because you nothing to begin with.

You remember the day that your father turned to you with dark, disapproving eyes:

"You are wasting an opportunity you never deserved to have, boy,"

As if he could foresee the future and you hate him passionately because he is the kind of man who could have made her happy.

So one day when you are sitting at your desk you find a picture of the two of you, grinning and blissful in the glory of your youth, and you feel the enormous shock of grief over what you lost, over what you caused, and you wonder, fleetingly, if she's happy, if she's all right, if she's "living the big life" like she always used to talk about. How can you feel hopeful and proud and hateful and scorned all at once? Try falling in love.

Wilson walks in and sees the photo in your hand and knows that you have gone down a path he cannot follow, that your love for Stacy Warner is nothing more than a shadow and a memory.

But you did love her once more than all the stars in the sky, (which you think is a stupid thing to say, because you feel nothing for the stars and you really shouldn't feel anything for her) and that you thought you could be the world for her and you thought you could be _enough _for her, but you weren't, you never were, you never will be.

It is so shocking to you, then, that you feel such pain and such betrayal and such _hate _towards a person that you once loved so immensely, a love that made you feel like a thousand medical cases solved, like the proud smile your father never gave you, like running for miles and miles and never growing tired.

But even as your soul withers and your leg aches and your mind spins and it's all her fault, you forgive her, because she was somebody you let you feel—be it anger or affection—and she never asked you to hide yourself away, and you know you will never have a chance like that again.

And if nothing else, she taught you how to hurt and she taught you how to cry, which is better, you suppose, than the nothing at all you feel now. You are living a half-life, a broken life, but somehow Death refuses to take you.

_Because a broken heart stills beats._

FIN.


End file.
